Sunday, October 04, 2009

Sunday in the Park with Joe

Today was cold and windy but we decided to travel around town and visit a few events we wanted to see anyway. By cold I mean it only hit a high of 73, and windy means gusts up to 45mph, with more smoke blown in from California fires and dust advisories.

First stop was an arts and crafts fair held in Boulder City. Boulder City was created back in the depression when the great Boulder Dam was being built, to house the laborers. It now is a very pretty small town near the dam, with very restrictive growth laws to prevent it from getting too big. Neighboring Henderson by contrast wants to get as big as it can, and is continuously annexing land to the south and east and trying to circle Boulder. The arts fair was held in a large park in the middle of town, and comprised of hundreds of those little tents and awnings, filled with all types of crafts, handmade items, stuff that it looks like it came right from China next to stuff obviously made on someone’s back porch. B wanted some small things to put in our recently improved front courtyard, and we ended up with a metal scorpion and a metal dragonfly, which should fit very well.


There were also lots of booths filled with assorted foods for sale, but we held off on that.


One of the most popular areas was up on the hill.


After wandering for a few hours we headed down to Mandalay Bay, the site of the world’s largest tattoo convention. Admission was free for locals with ID, I wasn’t about to spring the $35 to get in. (Lots of events are open to locals, just to beef up the crowds). Iphone pictures, sorry, a little blurry.


But you could sign up and have some of the best artists in the world ink you right there.


On the way out we passed by the big wave pool, with lots of people sitting in the sun even though it was cold to us.


And of course I had to add to my portfolio of weddings caught around town. The chapel at Mandalay is down near the convention center and Shark Reef.


Walking back we passed part of a previous wedding party. I don’t think they were the principals (not yet)


After wandering through the convention center we walked towards the Luxor and ate at the Burger Bar, one of my favorite burger places. I’ve written about it before, they have about the best tasting burgers around, though a little expensive. You basically build your own burger, picking out the type of meat, bun, and accessories from a menu of about thirty different items such as type of cheese, sauce, onions, jalapenos, and so on. They also have sweet potato fries, not found in most other burger places. The menu has changed and now there is also a build your own milkshake section, where you can pick out the type of ice cream and then select from a few dozen toppings. I didn’t notice if jalapenos were listed there also, but if not you could probably get them if you really want to. I noticed the section on predefined shakes, and found some rather unusual, such as the Guinness with vanilla ice cream float. Don’t know about you, but that does seem rather unusual, thinking about it that combo might work, but I was hesitant to try it out.

Even though it was late Sunday afternoon the place was full. The little booths do have individual TV screens, in addition to a number of big screens over the bar, all tuned to Sunday football, so perhaps people were there to watch the games and eat. The Mandalay sports book was packed; football betting seems to be popular. There were quite a few tattoos in evidence, probably spillover from the convention (which is why hotels have convention centers attached).

Very visible elements to the Burger Bar atmosphere are the waitresses. Sorry, I tried to get some pictures but the lighting was a little dim and I just didn’t catch anyone in an appropriate position. All of the waitresses are rather slim (or downright skinny, depending on your attitude) and wear the same black outfits, which consisted of thin legged tight black pants and a black T shirt with the BB sparkly logo. What was apparently a management decision was to supply shirts that were too small for the wearer, meaning they were very tight and very short. This resulted in the appearance of several items that are probably appropriate to a Vegas bar; spillover from the top and exposure from the bottom. Some of the girls were either well endowed or well enhanced, and poorly contained by the shirts. There were also large gaps between the bottom of the shirts and the low worn pants, making it very obvious that the tramp stamp tattoo is still popular. Most of the girls wore pants so tight and low that I wondered how they were able to keep them up. Due to the thin-ness most did not have very large hips (if any at all) and not very large, how shall I say, butts. The pants were probably pulled up to the waist when put on, buttoned and belted (with sparkly belts) then pushed down as low as they could go: combined with the short tops this left the stamps very visible from the rear and evidence of probably waxing visible from the front. As when skinny girls wore tube tops, whenever some walked by I wondered why those pants didn’t just slide on down to the floor as there didn’t appear to be anything preventing the downward movement. But close intensive study was inhibited by the presence of B at the table with me, though there was one blond serving a distant area that was very difficult to ignore when she walked past. No, this is not an adult club, and there was nowhere near the amount of skin visible here as at those places, it still provided some entertainment. And the burgers are good.

So, what did you do on your Sunday?

No comments: